Botnet Herders Attack MS06-040 Worm Hole

[BorisVM]

The first wave of malicious attacks against the MS06-040 vulnerability is underway, using malware that hijacks unpatched Windows machines for use in IRC-controlled botnets.

The attacks, which started late Aug. 12, use a variant of a backdoor Trojan that installs itself on a system, modifies security settings, connects to a remote IRC (Internet Relay Chat) server and starts listening for commands from a remote hacker, according to early warnings from anti-virus vendors.

The MSRC (Microsoft Security Response Center) described the attack as "extremely targeted" and said it appears to be specifically targeting unpatched Windows 2000 machines.

"[This is] very much unlike what we have seen in the past with recent Internet-wide worms," said MSRC program manager Stephen Toulouse. "In fact, our initial investigation reveals this isn't a worm in the "auto-spreading" classic sense," he added.

"Very few customers appear to be impacted, and we want to stress that if you have the MS06-040 update installed, you are not affected. While all that could change based on the actions of the criminals, it's important to scope the situation and take the opportunity to stress that everyone should apply this update," Toulouse said.

eWEEK.com Special Report: Worm Attacks

The MSRC is using its blog to communicate guidance in the early stages of the attack.

According to the LURHQ Threat Intelligence Group, the attackers are using a variant of the Mocbot trojan that was used in the Zotob worm attack in August 2005.

"Amazingly, this new variant of Mocbot still uses the same IRC server hostnames as a command-and-control mechanism after all these months. This may be partially due to the low-profile it has held, but also may be due to the fact that the hostnames and IP addresses associated with the command-and-control servers are almost all located in China," LURHQ said in an advisory.